


Genus Leucojum

by fortunecookie



Category: Rise of the Guardians (2012)
Genre: Angst, M/M, One Shot, aged up!Jamie, apologetic!Jack, cute Christmas feels, high school!Jamie, loss of contact, sick!Jack
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-19
Updated: 2013-06-19
Packaged: 2017-12-15 12:18:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,266
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/849489
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fortunecookie/pseuds/fortunecookie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Genus Leucojum (noun): a white-flowered Eurasian plant related to and resembling the snowdrop, typically blooming in the summer or autumn." What if Jack left Jamie for a year? A one-shot wherein snowflakes and sixfold symmetry (in the form of shocking facts) sow the seeds of love as Jack and Jamie go through a winter of goodbyes and a summer of hellos.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Genus Leucojum

**Author's Note:**

> Hi there AO3 reader, fortunecookie reporting for fanfic writing duty! This fic was finished at 2 am and I'm still reeling with the feels of writing about military!Mr. Bennett, sick!Jack, and matchmaker!Sophie... and, of course, deliciously angsty!Jamie (sorry, Jamie, but you're the only 'real' teenager here, so, uh, yeah, here ya go, heaps of brooding insecurity). Just FYI, this fanfic is my headcanon of how Jack deals with the fame/benefits of becoming a Guardian. In this fic, Jamie was eight when he met Jack and he's sixteen, nearly seventeen, now. 
> 
> Oh, and this is slash, so get out those rosy colored slash sunglasses if it floats your boat (it does mine).
> 
> Disclaimer: None of this is official ROTG stuff. Unfortunately I'm no producer (wanna let me intern? *nudge nudge wink wink)
> 
> Enjoy! Feedback appreciated. First Bennefrost ship fic. :D

The first snowflakes of winter in Burgess were always reserved solely for one boy. Jack Frost made sure that they were made of the sternest, whitest ice, and he often wrote tiny, neat messages on them before he waved his staff and directed them towards the window of the Bennett residence, a decent 2-floor house in the sleepy suburbs of the town.

Every year the snowflakes rained down in droves and the children of Burgess were treated to a record number of snow days - none fully noticed the significance, though, except for the mousy-haired, quiet sixteen-year-old who drew childhood fables and volunteered at the orphanage. 

The boy was enamored with the snowflakes. The winter right after the one where he had met Jack Frost, he had woken up to the smell of cinnamon hot-chocolate and distant sleigh bells (he couldn't have been imagining that) and the muted TV rerun of Elf, and once he so much as glimpsed at that frosted-over message on the window (the exact same one that Jack had drew the Easter bunny on), he gave a whoop worthy of the Indians vs. Colonials war games they played at school.

There were enough snowflakes to cover the entire window, and the tessellation was complex - hexagons, overlayed triangles, other geometric figures too advanced for Jamie to name yet with his 3rd grade rate math. The powder stayed brick-hard, even when Jamie tapped on it. The crystals captured the lazy Sunday sun and colored the room in a cornucopia of color that seemed to draw smiles on the walls. The message itself on the window was simple and clean:

Stay good Jamie. North tells me you've been fantastic this year. See you soon, I miss you, kiddo. - Jack

The messages and the snowflakes become so ingrained in Christmas tradition (at least to the boy) that Jamie soon forgot what it was like having Christmas without clandestine messages from his best friend/winter spirit/immortal Guardian, and in his mind there was a clear cut crystal igloo wall separating Before and After Jack. The snow piles up in his memory like autumn leaves and melting snowmen and Jamie realizes - with a chill, when he's sixteen - that he can't quite recall when Jack's snowflakes started to warm him instead of cooling his fingertips.

Before and after. The boy is never quite the same. The pre-teen winters tumble down like an avalanche until all that's left are frozen moments of wintry words and freshly toasted friendship; crisp new coatings of falling 'boy meets boy' snow.

Jamie and Jack... Jack and Jamie. Jamie watches Peter Pan with his sister Sophie munching caramel popcorn and wishes upon a star that Neverland was Foreverland and Wendy sorted it out with Peter (Sophie claims it's a "ship") in the end. 

\---

Jack doesn't expect anything special for this sixteenth birthday, because although his birthday is close to Christmas and Jack loves tampering with his gifts every year (regardless of the naughty/nice list), he knows Jack's been busy rescuing new wide-eyed eight-year-olds from the dullness of a hot day and protecting thousands of millions of future presidents, TV anchors, dentists, and florists from childhood decay. Not to mention Jack's surprise seat on the council of guardian appointments. Jamie feels an irrational sense of pride when he thinks that he was Jack's first believer, when now, Jack has so many in places he's only seen on a map (Siberia! Moscow! Tibet!), and all the other Guardians listen to him, despite Jack being the scrawny, devilish eternal teenager in tow.

Still, the pain in his chest only blossoms and pushes the pride back down when he wakes up at five a.m. (he's an early riser now, got into the habit of running cross country) and sees that Jack hasn't been there to write secret snow messages on the windows, and hasn't sent flying penguins to pinch his cheeks red (nor has he left a seemingly early stocking lying around). Jamie shouldn't be so disappointed, not when he's sixteen and a sophomore for heaven's sake, but he forces the swelling feeling down and drinks this weird mixture of fruit lights/nutmeg tea that Sophie brews ("it's a special occasion, and I love you, so try it, big bro!") that upsets his stomach but gives him some other fuzzy sensation to ponder ("Thanks Soph, you're the best.").

Jamie gets a package from his dad, Colonel Bennett, consisting of a myriad of army pins and flags, while the large scoop on the ice cream soda is the glossy airplane ticket that screams, almost yells, paternal love in his face.

"Mom, look! Quick!" he shouts. "Dad's got me a flight to visit him at base!"

The look on his mom's face is one of confusion, delight, suspicion, and finally, unadulterated joy. "You'll have an amazing time, honey." The middle-age wrinkles on her face smooth out like the blue bed sheet in Jamie's room.

Last Christmas Jamie told his dad that he wanted to enlist in an army academy to study environmental sciences. Colonel Bennett had choked on his fruitcake, hugged his son close, and grinned, saying, "I always knew your weather interest would lead to great things." 

The flight's in two days. Jamie notes that the academy is (thank God) in a place with snow and ice.

(Not that he wants to meet someone there, no. It's just that the windows in his room are becoming too thick and too concealing for the growing boy to glimpse the world through.)

It rains that night. The water distorts the streets below and the pitter-patter shrilly sings, Rain, rain, go away, come again another day; Jack Frost's late, Jack Frost's late. No messages for you. 

Late, late. Don't wait.

If he wasn't so anxious and happy about the plane ticket, Jamie would think he's losing his mind.

\---

The morning they meet is nothing like Jamie imagined it would be. Shocking Fact #1: Jack's outside of his element. It's heavenforbidit summertime and Jamie's in board shorts and fake Ray Bans and he's walking the dog along the park and it's not the ba-dum ba-dum heart thumping, slow motion run to embrace each other backlit by the rising sun, but the sky is bruised with pink today and Jamie feels like his heart has been given the most beautiful black eye when he sees him staring up at the birds. Jack's hoodie, school-dark uniform blue, striking against his peach albino skin. His barefoot feet and thin frame leaning against an oakwood. Jamie's sixteen going on seventeen now and he's starting to recognize this stirring jolt of feeling.

Shocking Fact #2: Jack doesn't seem to have noticed him. Jamie can't remember a single moment when Jack didn't reference something he did in autumn or spring and whenever he missed something, Jamie or the gang would fill him in. It wasn't stalker-ish, though it could have been, and instead it made Jamie feel special. Jack noticed him. Jack always seemed to know when Jamie was in the room, and he'd swing by within five minutes as if the very Mr. North Wind had express-mailed Jamie's location like modern-day GPS. To see the same boy - obviously lost in thought, or trying to look nonchalant - was… well, different.

Jamie has that warm feeling glowing inside again like a furnace and he takes a step forward. He ties the dog to a nearby bench as quickly and naturally as he can and he says Jack's name like they're in a classroom and they're sharing a secret they don't want any other classmate to hear.

"Jack," he whispers. "Jack Frost."

Jack whips around (yes, there's that heightened hearing, Jamie thinks, some normalcy) and there's a flurry of emotion over his angled face. Every year the emotions get more and more varied. Jamie thinks, it's the slight stubble, and it's the un-parka, un-mittened clothing that's throwing the Guardian off, but Jamie's also simultaneously too absorbed in the why and how of Facts #1 and #2, so the first few words Jack says to him in over a year fly over his head. 

"I'm sorry, what?" 

Jack gives him a tired half-smile. "I said, you sounded just like you did the first time you saw me."

"Oh?"

"Yeah. How're you doing?"

It's funny how Jack, the Guardian of Fun, is playing games over something so adult and grown-up as loss. Lack of contact. Drifting away and getting older. It's almost laughable, Jamie thinks, that Jack is tiptoeing over the awkward like a tooth fairy in the littered child's room; that he's treating Jamie like he did all those years back when the capital 'T' truth is staring them both in the eye like those dancing sunspots - Jamie's grown up, and Jack wasn't there. 

How're you doing? What was there to say?

I'm 95% going to the army. I'm majoring in environmental sciences. I've understood my dad better of late. My mom thinks I should help Sophie with her pre-college planning. I trekked to the peak of that mountain we pointed to from that Snow Valley ski lodge when I was a kid. I'm desperately trying to pass Economics. I waited on the roof for you for about two hours on Christmas Eve. Sandy's sent me nightmares (or is it Pitch) about you.

Instead, what he says is simple and clean. Like Jack's first snow message.

"I missed you." The words slide out of his throat like giant snowballs: weighty and cold. Jack looks blankly at him for a second, then abruptly pulls him into a side-hug, and Jamie can smell the freshwater mints and cypress in his hair for a millisecond before he jerks away.

"I'm so sorry. I should've called, I should've sent more snow messages or asked Sandy, heck even Bunnymund, to tell you how I was. I know the whole college stuff was serious and I could've helped you out with decisions and to relax and I'm sorry that I didn't visit." 

Jamie knows that this impromptu apology shouldn't heal as much as it does. The greenery behind them is vivid, and if he blinks he thinks he can imagine the golden swirling dream dust that Sandy uses flowing in the background, but Jack's here: his blue hoodied chest is a foot away, and he's avoiding his gaze and fidgeting with his staff with nimble, branch-thin fingers, and his gorgeous dove-white hair is tousled and there's no way Sandy could conjure up such a real, breathing version of his childhood idol. 

Jamie tries to look wise and collected. "I know."

Because no matter how much the lost snowflakes and the conversations in the void hurt, he knew Jack would have felt regret, and he knew Jack was fundamentally good. Because even though Jack did break Jamie's fragile little queer, coming-out heart, he couldn't convince himself that Jack was a cocky playboy who made best friends with snot-nosed kids and ran off before they could grow up without a single pang of oh I miss him or oh that sucked.

Jack grips the back of his neck apologetically, a picture of nerves. He's blinking in the late morning glare. "I'd like to - I mean - I think that - um… argh." He groans. "I'm an idiot, okay? I started becoming too excited and caught up in this guardianship thing, and I met hundreds of other kids, and I started plotting snow days and fun adventures for every one of them… I tried to come back to Burgess often but I was stupid and I liked feeling accepted and all powerful by all of the other guys… And then North was so impressed he offered me that Christmas Council position and I was too selfish."

Jamie's quietly taking all of this in, but it's here that he blurts out, "Why are you here? It's winter somewhere else on the globe." (He's trying not to focus on how whiny that makes him sound.) 

"Jamie, you were my first believer. You always believed in me, even when I didn't and I know I've been horrible at being there for you this past year. I don't deserve to have a friend like you. I know you're probably mad at me and that I was a jerk. I'd be lying if I said that I didn't know what I was doing, ignoring you, but every time I was going to go back I thought, maybe this is the time he's grown up and he doesn't believe in me anymore, and I didn't have the guts to try, so I went back to whatever country had snow at the time and I met other kids." Jack shuffled his feet. 

"It - it wasn't the same. When I gave you that sleigh ride through the streets and you laughed the entire time - that was being a Guardian of Fun. But what I was doing, creating snow slides for the other kids, it wasn't you smiling or laughing and I was terrified of both being miserable meeting the kids and being too happy and attaching myself to one of them. I figured it out a month ago… I couldn't bring Fun to the kids because the one I liked the best, I'd pushed away." The monologue isn't as smooth as Jamie pictured it to be, but it's the gritty reality of used-to-be friends. This is new. It's dizzying him.

"I know it's much too late," Jack continues, "but I never gave you your sixteenth birthday present." Shocking Fact #4: Jack makes up a present. Jack takes Jamie's startled blink as an okay to go on and he takes a silver-wrapped box from his hoodie. "Jamie, you can hate me all you want afterwards and you can forget about me, if you choose… But please allow me to at least give you this."

Jamie feels like he's eight years old again, pooling in eyes of butterfly blue irises. "Okay."

Jack hands the box open and Jamie automatically begins to tear off the packaging, trained after years of sitting with Jack in his room, counting Christmas loot. Jack's watching him now, with a strange fascination that Jamie can't place. 

Oh. Jamie can't hide the smile that graces his face. In the middle of the box, laid carefully on silver cloth, is a single snowflake crafted out of some ethereal, shiny material he's never seen - new plastic replacement by North? Or a mixture of Sandy's dream dust and Tooth's feather shine? In any case, it's Guardian-like and it's plain to see that this is not mortal construction. The engraved words are laced with the telltale rainbow hue of magic: One year. 

"What is it?" Jamie is turning the snowflake over in his hands, its feathery weight and refusal to melt surprising him.

"It's a magic talisman that has one year's worth of experiences and conversations that we would've experienced, had I visited yo - achoo kasghu." Jack gives a strangled half-cough, half-choke at the end of the sentence. Jamie's got a gazillion and one questions about the talisman, but Jack's sick, so he swallows them down right away. 

"Are you okay?" Jack looks like he's about to wave his hand and say "fine," but an unmistakable shadow passes over his face and he gives a weak "don't worry" gesture with his right hand. Jamie's still miffed, but this display of illness awakes something twisting and flip-flopping in his heart and he tries to look calm as he presses his hand to Jack's clammy forehead. Then he mentally slaps himself as he remembers Jack is Jack Frost, and his body temperature is very different from a regular human's. He feels marginally hotter.

"You're sick because you came in the summer."

Jack gives him a look that practically screams Captain Obvious and prods him with his staff. He's let his guard down. Jack looks like the Jack he was before.

He cracks a real smirk this time and grabs Jamie's wrist, the hand that's ghosting over his forehead. "You don't say." The deadpan sarcasm makes Jamie laugh, and that makes Jack melodramatically protest, "So I have to become sick to make you like me again," with his white-tinted eyebrow arched high up.

People are starting to look at Jamie funny but he really doesn't care at all because Jack's back.

\---

"Come on, let's get you back to my house," Jamie says, a single bead of sweat rolling down his face. He unties the dog and walks with his arm supporting Jack's weak frame. They don't speak as they walk back, but the baby squirrels and birds seem to recognize the winter spirit and they give varieties of curtsies to him, which makes Jamie's lips twitch. Jack is a visiting prince, it seems. 

When they get back Jamie wastes no time turning up the A.C in his room and setting up an ice bath. Jack winces throughout and says sorry for being an inconvenience and there's really no need but Jamie rolls his eyes and shoves him into the wardrobe to shed his rapidly dripping winter attire.

Jack whistles when he enters the bathroom and sees the tub filled with ice cubes. "How'd you learn how to do that?"

"I took up track and field cross country last year, just for fun. It turns out ice baths are good for your muscles after a hard work out."

Jack gives Jamie a second different look this time - his gaze straight and unwavering, despite the fever spreading through his cells. "I could have been at your track meets. I could have helped you train in winter… designed paths for you in the woods." Jack lowers himself into the bath.

Jamie can't help but chuckle. "I'm sure the school and the other runners would wonder how such a marvelous path was made without funding." He's weirdly touched and made shy at Jack's persistent apologies.

Jack turns to him, his face the slightest tinge of periwinkle (apparently winter spirits blush in blue). Jamie is massaging his forehead with a cold towel now, pressing lazy figure eights and circles. The boy tries not to focus on Jack's slightly open, chapped cherry lips. Jack's only wearing a navy singlet and boxers, much to Jamie's astonishment, so the cold can settle in his bones faster. Jamie's trying not to glance at how the ice seems to welcome and greet Jack, crushing and remolding to encase his arms and legs. When Jack sighs a little in relief, Jamie's furiously, horribly red, because shocking fact #5 Jamie didn't expect to be fighting the prospect of swooning with a barely-clothed Jack in the bathtub. It's because he's sick, that's why you're treating him, that's why -

"Don't you believe in miracles?"

Jamie stops pressing the cold towel for a minute. In all of the sensory overload, he's nearly forgotten what Jack was saying in the first place. But he knows Jack knows what his answer will be. 

"I have and always will believe."

Jack takes the lack of medical care as an opportunity to sit up and smile at him, a genuine, 100% Frost smile, full-toothed and pearly and overflowing with happiness. Then, as if remembering all the wrongs, his brow furrowed and he leaned in.

Ba-dum. Ba-dum.

"Forgive me for doubting you?" Jack's voice is a low rumble that echoes around the marble tiles. Forgive me -?

"Yes," Jamie breathes out a breath he didn't know he was holding. "Yes."

Jack flashes him that brilliant Frost-patented smile again and he says, coughing a little, "I didn't get to finish telling you about the talisman."

Jamie's curiosity gets the better of his doctor-like side. "How is it possible that it has one year of experiences?"

Jack's eyes shift slightly and they become sly. "I met Father Time. He showed me the alternate universe of our story, if I hadn't been such a jerk, and after lots of begging Manny intervened and they did a spiritual talk thing and here we are: ta dah, magic." The cheeky demeanor deflates and he sinks deeper in the ice. "I guess - I guess I wanted to show you that we can still have all of those experiences in real life; that it's not too late."

Jack runs a hand through his hair (Jamie fights his urge to do the same). "I know I've been self-serving, and a bad friend to you. I wouldn't have even come back, because to be completely honest, I was too ashamed… but…"

"But what?" Jamie's looking everywhere but those sapphire eyes.

Jack closes them and the ice clinks and clinks a cacophonous soundtrack in the water. "I… missed you too, Jamie." 

Jamie doesn't realize he's gripping the snowflake until Jack gently clasps his hand over his and opens his palm, saying, "You don't ever have to use this if you're too freaked out. But just keep it on you? Somewhere safe?" Jamie can't remember the last time Jack pleaded with him like this - so desperate.

\---

"Jack." 

Jack's hair is flattened now from the freezing water and the singlet sticks to his body like a wetsuit. Jamie licks his lips, then quickly looks away. 

"I'm going to get you some clean clothes to wear, or dry your wet ones - "

Jamie stops mid-sentence because, in that one moment, Jack looks absolutely miserable, like he's stuck on a cliff with no compass and no hot air balloon. He looks confused, because Jamie realizes he hasn't answered Jack's can-we-be-friends-please proposition, and what's more, Jack's sniffling from the weather change. Jamie can easily make out Jack's jawline from here, with the sunlight filtering in from the bathroom window, and Jamie awkwardly lunges forward and -

\- kisses Jack on the cheek. Jack's back to below freezing body temperature, so save from a cold (which is ironic) he's good, but Jamie feels the numbness immobilizing his mouth. 

Jack is so shocked he stumbles backwards and accidentally plunges underneath all the ice and water. 

Jamie's cheeks are burning despite the lack of feeling in his lips and once Jack surfaces, he's a furious night blue. 

They face each other for what seems to be ages. Jamie thinks for a second that Jack might change his mind about wanting to be friends with him again, but then he catches the wide-awake, positively glittering tundra/indigo eyes and Jack's chastely returning the gesture. A kiss for a kiss. Jamie's eyes are blown open as Jack's peck leaves him shivering. 

"Was… was that okay?" Jack stutters.

"Yeah, more than okay," Jamie admits. "I'm sorry though for being so forward."

Jack's eyes cloud over. "You like me? Like romantically?"

Jamie's gripping the sides of the chair, attempting to stay still as he feels the universe jolt back and forth. Might as well. You can't hide now. "Yes, for a while now," he manages to say.

Jack looks down. "I'm sorry, I think it'll be better if I won't be friends with you…" 

Jamie's heart is as dead and as spastic through that one exchange as a speared Atlantic cod. (This is no time for fancy metaphors.) He's about to stand up and leave to think when Jack stands up, twirls him around, and holds both his hands almost reverently.

"I was saying, I think I want a new proposition." Jack's grin reached his eyes and he nodded in the direction of the bathroom window.

It had been frosted over in complex tessellations and pretty, Edwardian script that Jamie could identify a mile away. 

Will you be my boyfriend?

Before Jamie can even react, Jack is rushing to justify and cover bases as best as he can. "NowIknowthatthisissuddenandthatIjustsaidheylet'sbefriendssothismightbetoofastandyou'reahumanandI'maimmortalandwe'reboysandIknowyourfamilyisconservative -"

Jamie shushes Jack with a finger to his parted lips and he presses the snowflake talisman in-between their interlaced hands. He can hear his own heart beating loudly and erratically in time with Jack's.

"Let's make up all these lost memories, okay?"

\---

Jack shudders from the intensity of those words and the bathroom walls resonate with the strength of this unorthodox attraction. If Jack looked up beyond the clouds, maybe he could see Cupid or Father Time congratulating each other on a job well done, or they could have heard Sophie creeping away with a satisfied smile on her face, or they could have witnessed the trees bowing down out of the blue. 

But for now, they just laughed and swapped realization-of-crushes stories; fed each other popsicles and watermelons and slowly repaired the Jamie/Jack sized hole in their psyches. There were pauses here and there and quiet bonfire-side discussions on mortal/immortal relationship issues and finger crossing when it came to the Guardians' official judgement; and it definitely was a summer to remember. 

("I still can't believe I actually went to Burgess in summertime and nearly fainted from the heat. You know, I didn't even know where you were because I was too uncomfortable using all my powers to track you down?"

"It was kind of adorable, though."

"You weren't the fever-struck one!"

"You're always very hot."

"…Wow, that was cute and suggestive and touching all in one."

"Best boyfriend ever, right?")

Jack leaves messages everywhere now. In dew, in frost, in Jamie's coffee, in the rain and especially in the snow. It's the little things like this which lead to the discovery of one last fact.

Shocking (or not so) fact #6. Jamie loves Jack and Jack loves Jamie.

The summers, falls, springs, and winters after fact #6 are never quite the same again; and they are as colorful and as mesmerizing as a kaleidoscope of iridescent rainbows in snowflakes left in secret on windows watching friendships bloom in the cold like Genus Leucojum.

Jamie and Jack; Jack and Jamie.


End file.
